2018 Predilection Issue

Yes folks, it’s time once again for the most anticipated, oft quoted and occasionally reviled Annual Predilection Issue, where we don’t predict the future, but just follow the trends to their logical conclusions.

Last year’s report had a stunning 98.0819% accuracy rate.  We correctly predilected Donald Trump’s firy infatuation with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and his jealous rages when he caught Unny playing Rubber Sheets and Petroleum Oil with Vlad the Impaler and Jinping the Kingpin.

We correctly predilected Florida’s new Disney Ski Resort opening amidst protestations that polar heating was causing frigid cold to reach the 28^th parallel, and NASA taking credit for cooling the planet with all its hot air.

We also correctly predilected that Harvey Wine-mug would lead a mass Hollywood conversion to Quakerism, with public confessions becoming all the rage.  The trend became so popular that it has even reached the halls of CONgress, where the airing of dirty laundry has become practically rampant.

So, without futher self-congratulations, we present the One, and thankfully the ONLY Far Side 2018 Predilection Issue!

10. The UK Royal Breeding Program to Save Endangered Privileged White Folks will announce its first Mulatto member, as second-string stud Prince Andy marries Marla Maples in the world’s most expensive virtual signal ever conceived.  The event will be heralded as the Most Amazing Act of Auto-Racism ever performed in public.

9. The Marxist/Progressivist feeding frenzy will continue apace adherents try to out-signal each other, causing mass riots as they suddenly realize that every medium they rely on to get their message out was invented by a white male, including the alternating current that powers their smartphones.  They are finally silenced when they realize en masse that the English language was invented by white males, too.

8. Ski resort owners will have their greatest year ever across the Northern Hemisphere as the season extends into late August.  They will shut down for two weeks out of sheer exhaustion, only to re-open in early September amidst record snowfall in Southern California.  Al Gore will be kidnapped and vanish for four months, only to be discovered frozen solid inside a snowman in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

7. A group of adventurous French teenagers will come upon Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in the Paris catacombs playing a bizarre sex game in which they take turns spanking each other and yelling the names “Hitler” and “de Gaulle”.  The teens will upload a video to D-Tube which will instantly garner over one billion hits and earn the teens over $20 million STEEM DOLLARS.  Country singer Bertie Higgins will rocket back to fame with a re-release of his hit “Bogey and Bacall,” changing the names to “Hitler and deGaulle”.

6. Italian-Americans will cry out with one voice as new revelations will expand the PizzaGate scandal and successive scandals will be called SpaghettiGate, MacaroniGate and EnsalattaRusticaGate.  Olive Garden restaurants will quietly shift its menu to Greek food.  There will be talk of re-opening the Colosseum in Rome and feeding child sex traffickers to the lions for public entertainment.

5. The world will breathe a sigh of relief when Iran finally throws off the shackles of Islamic theocracy and returns to its heyday under the Shah, since the US and Israel will no longer have a good excuse to invade the country.  Elation will turn to horror, though, when the world realizes just how smart and industrious the Persian people really are, as most of the major advances in science, art and literature will come out of the newly renamed Persia.  Washington will add Persia back on the Axis of Evil list when the country becomes only the fourth nation to land a rover on the Moon and proceed to prove the Moon landings never took place.

4. Bitcoin will hit $100,000 by mid-year as nearly the entire world adopts cryptocurrencies for all transactions, suddenly crashing every national currency on the planet in a single week.  By the end of the year, nearly every human being will join a local autonomous collective, stop voting in national elections and simply ignore all existing governments.  There will be an explosion of art and technology as crowd funding turns to supporting radical inventions and real artists.  A new form of entertainment will arise as bands of homeless lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats roam from place to place trying to pass laws and levy taxes.

3.  Related to Predilection #4, the #GeezerMedia will finally die.  People will simply stop going to Hollywood movies, pro sports games and tuning in to 24-hour news channels.  Google, Amazon and Farcebook will vanish practically overnight as folks lose interest in having mega-corporations mine their personal data for profit and not sharing with the rightful owners.  The masses will not only find themselves much happier, but with a lot of extra time on their hands for creating stuff of real value to society.

2. SpaceX will announce that the two billionaires who have paid for a trip around the Moon are, in fact, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zukerberg.  The world will watch in amazement as the two meddlesome tech giants are roasted alive in the Van Allen Belts.  Soon after, people around the world will be sending in suggestions for other pairs to be sent on a one-way trip to the Moon.  One of the most popular pairings will be George Soros and Pope Francis I, with over one billion votes.

1. Hillary Clinton will be selected as the December cover girl for Better Cells and Wardens magazine.  Later the same month, she will be caught trying to tunnel out of Levenworth using a life-size poster of Saul Alinsky to cover the hole in her wall.  An inspection will reveal her digging tools inside a copy of Rules for Radicals, which she refers to as her Bible.  After being discovered, Hillary will retreat into her mental “safe space,” sitting in a corner petting a stuffed white Persian cat, wearing gold-colored contacts and muttering the word “spectre” for the rest of her natural born days.

That's it for this coming year.  Be sure to check back next year when we review our score card.  And don't forget to check in regularly as we trash the pretentious pop culture and bring a little reason to bear on society.

A Seasonal Thought

Well, it's that time of year again - our second-most favorite (Thanksgiving being the first). I love the history of Christmas. It's a very ancient holiday that has undergone dozens of iterations over the millennia. All of them are very interesting and worth keeping in mind.

One of the oldest European versions of this holiday is the Teutonic Yuletide. This was the time of a mythic wild hunt organized by Wodin and his wolves and was the last hunt before full winter set in. A good hunt meant the difference between survival and certain death, so one imagines that it was a rather important holiday.

For the extent of the holiday, folks would take a large log that would burn for a good amount of time. They would coat it with various minerals so that when it burned, it would give off colors for at least a couple of days. This was the Yule log of song and story. It provided heat and cooked the hunting trophies, and was the last big blowout of the season before settling in for the brutal cold.

Winter was something to be feared. Vegetation died, game disappeared and the old folks had a better than equal chance of not seeing spring. It was also marked by the shortest day of the year, in the northern hemisphere. For people that didn't know about Earth's axial tilt, it was mystifying.

Thus was born various celebrations to "resurrect" the Sun, as it appeared to die (stop moving) for three days between the 21st and 24th of December. Naturally, when it started its northward movement again, it was a time of celebration. At the darkest time of the year, folks created celebrations of light to encourage the Sun to return. Bonfires, candles and all manner of lamps were lit in offering to the Sun gods. We still do this with some neighborgoods in the US going to obscene and absurd lengths to display lights, though I've always been partial to the "luminarias" - candles placed in bads of sand.

Ancient Rome took the holiday to excessive lengths, as they were prone to do. They called it Saturnalia, which was a seven day holiday of complete surrender to the party spirit. What with the Sun dying, the world may end, so why not go out with a good buzz on?

The festival featured huge public banquets and gift-giving. Frequently, master and servant would reverse roles. Folks would gamble, drink and party for a week, which probably would do the world a great deal of good about now.

In the time of Constantine, the holiday was Christianized to celebrate the Birth of the Son(Sun). Lights (German) and feasting (Roman) were combined with the tradition of gift-giving, which now was in the tradition of the Three Wise Men, rather than offerings.

In the English language, we adopted the word "tide" as a verb to wish someone good things. We bring tidings of joy. In the past few decades, the holiday has become almost entirely commercialized, so that retailers have come to depend on Christmas gift-giving to fund their entire year. In the US, folks buy more stuff for themselves than anyone else. Lighted displays have become contests and political statements. The Pope wrings his hands over the true meaning of Christmas, though methinks he has forgotten, too. Everyone wants their personal version of the holiday recognized by public displays. And not many people now worry about dying before spring.

All of this precedes the global New Year celebration, which is of course, yet another Roman/Christian creation. We celebrate it on January 1st thanks to Pope Gregpry XIII and his court astrologers. This year alone in Indonesia, we've already celebrated the Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist new years, so the event is rather arbitrary, though msot folks observe the Gregorian calendar on this occasion. January is named after the Roman god Janus, who looks backward and forward, stands at the threshold both inside and outside, at the same time. We raise our glasses to Auld Lang Syne, even though most folks couldn't tell you what that means (old long time). It's an ode to those who have been lost over the past year. Nice cheery stuff.

Regardless of when, how or what you celebrate, we here on the Far Side wish you and yours the very best of the Season and a happy and prosperous New Year. Never lose the traditions. They bind us to the past and guide us to the future.

Happy New Year!

From all of us here at LFS Headq-uarters, deep in the tropical jungles of Borneo, a heart-felt wish for a happy, safe, successful, and challenging New Year, 2011!

For some reason, a old Irish toast comes to our mind, though we can't imagine why. But here goes...

May you enjoy the four greatest blessings:
Honest work to occupy you.
A hearty appetite to sustain you.
A good woman to love you.
And a wink from the God above.

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun.
And find your shoulder to light on.
To bring you luck, happiness and riches.
Today, tomorrow and beyond.
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Slan agus beannacht!

The LFS Team

Post Scriptum 0 Since many readers are in Europe and North America, we have the unique ability to address you from next year. We have just passed midnight, the world is still here and last we checked, God is still in His Heaven.

We just wanted to tell you what it's like living in a city of 12 million people with no silly laws that protect them from their own stupidity. At midnight, it was a veritable war zone. There were fireworks erupting from every corner in every neighborhood for a full 30 minutes. It was raining flotsam and jetsam, and likely still is, though we dicided it was somewhat safer indoors. The noise was literally deafening and there were showers of sparks and booms from every direction. Kind of reminded us of Red Square, except it is warm and not smowing. Quite an interesting experience that we would recommend to anyone wanting to plan a get away for 2012!